Friday, June 12, 2009

Shout Out to the Students at CCVS

This week, students from Cornwall Collegiate and Vocational School in Cornwall, ON, contacted me to ask some questions about the business of writing (a special shout out to Elizabeth, Kayla, and Kasey). Here's what they asked:

1) What was the level of education you needed in order to pursue your writing career?

You don't *need* any higher education to be a writer, but it helps. I have a BA in English & Creative Writing and an MFA in Creative Writing. I went to a community college (Douglas College) for the first two years of my BA and transferred to the University of British Columbia for the rest of my education. I worked part time in a coffee shop while I was in school and went to school part time. It was kind of hard at the time, but it was worth it.

2) What job opportunities did you have for options, and how did you apply?

After I finished my MFA, I was a writer in residence in my hometown, Maple Ridge, BC, for two years. That gave me time to finish my first two books and find publishers. Then I moved to Vancouver and got a job in a bookstore. But I always made sure to have some sort of teaching work while I was doing these jobs, so I was always building up my teaching experience and my resume. I taught creative writing at the Arts Centre in Maple Ridge while I was Writer in Residence and then later at Vancouver Film School and Douglas College. I teach almost full time at Douglas College now and will teach a workshop at the Sage Hill Writing Experience next summer as well. I teach classes as they arise. I also edit for Event magazine and do a bit of freelance writing for magazines and websites. And I perform all over the place, which also pays a bit and lets me travel, which I love to do.

So, are there opportunities? Yes. But I wouldn't have heard about them if I didn't go to school and then keep my eyes and ears open. When you are (or want to be) a professional creative person it is important to be involved in your community. That's how readers (and employers) find you. Taking part in literary activities in your town or province or country can be really important. Volunteer at your local or provincial arts festival. Do internships. Take classes at colleges and universities. Go to the Banff Centre for the Arts or Film School or wherever. But most of all just keep reading and writing. *Everything* starts with your writing.

3) How does one end up getting published?

You start by writing and reading. Get good at that, and then start thinking about publishing. Enjoy the time you have as a young writer where your work is really yours. Read, write, share what you've written with writer friends you trust. Don't have any of those? Find them. Take writing classes. Read at open mics. Make chapbooks. Get obsessed. Eventually, you'll have an overwhelming need to share your work with a larger audience and, by then, because you've worked so hard, you might have written something that's actually worth printing!

After that, here’s the formula: most, if not all, writers get their start in literary magazines. So start there. Submit to literary magazines and start building a portfolio. Collect your rejection slips like badges of honour. Eventually you'll have a big stack of rejections, a little list of publications, and something that's starting to resemble a manuscript. Put together the manuscript and send it out to publishers. Celebrate more rejection. Keep writing. Keep reading. Then just wait. In the waiting time, write another book...and then another. Publishing is a *lot* about waiting and being patient. It's real crazy-making stuff.

4) Are there any challenges you came across throughout your career?

Too many to mention all of them. But probably my biggest challenge is time management. It's hard for me to decide what's important and what's not sometimes. I get totally smashed by emails, for example, and can't imagine how to answer everything and everyone. It's overwhelming.

5) What is one of your biggest satisfactions through writing?

I love it when someone from really far away finds my work and then takes the time to write me and tell me what they thought of it. That's amazing. I also love to travel. This summer I'm going travel to, and write about, the Muskwa Kechika, one of the last untouched boreal forests in North America. It's way up north and we get to fly in by floatplane, ride packhorses into the bush, and camp out for a week or so. The deal is I get to write and raise awareness about wild places. How amazing is that? And later this summer, I'll read at the Queensland Poetry Festival in Australia. Australia! I've never been there and I can't wait to go and meet Australian poets. It's going to rock. That's the other thing, when you are a writer; you get to meet other writers. You realise pretty quick that you are part of a rather big community of like-minded people. Of course everyone has different opinions and thoughts and experiences, but you are all connected through this thing you feel impelled to do: writing. It's humbling and enlightening and you get to learn a lot about people. I love what I do.

About

Elizabeth Bachinsky is the author of five collections of poetry: CURIO (BookThug, 2005), HOME OF SUDDEN SERVICE (Nightwood, 2006), GOD OF MISSED CONNECTIONS (Nightwood, 2009), I DON'T FEEL SO GOOD (BookThug, 2012) and THE HOTTEST SUMMER IN RECORDED HISTORY (Nightwood, 2013). Her poetry has been nominated for awards including the Pat Lowther Award, The Kobzar Literary Award, The George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature, the Governor General's Award for Poetry and the Bronwen Wallace Award, and has appeared in literary journals, anthologies and on film around the world. She was born in Regina, raised in Prince George and Maple Ridge B.C., and now lives in New Westminster where she is an instructor of creative writing at Douglas College.

God of Missed Connections

God of Missed Connections is a formidable work from this young poet: a considered and important contribution to the quintessential dialogue on Canada’s fractured collective history. ~ Vancouver Review

Home of Sudden Service

A slight book that packs a wallop of teenage angst, boredom and risky sexiness, this collection is set in the back seats on the back roads of Mission, Cultus Lake and all those roads that end at Hope. ~ BC Book World

Curio

Bachinsky writes for us, the inheritors of a debased estate in which the last elegiac strains are heard chiefly as canned schmaltz piped into the corridors. ~ K. Silem Mohammad

Head Shot

Photo by David Ellingsen

What They say

“Bachinsky's work, with its myriad of influences ranging from Eliot...to Lisa Robertson, is able to rise above the boring drone of the avant-garde-versus-traditional debates. Her work can straddle both sides: formal and experimental, personal and mathematical, with a keen ear for the erotically ridiculous.”

~ Zoe Whittall, Globe and Mail

“Bachinsky has won deserved admiration for her work, full of guts and verve, spunk and nerve.…straight-shooting, straight-talking…Bachinsky’s third poetry collection [has] that same rough beauty, sinuous toughness, of make-do carpentry that works.”

~ George Elliott Clarke, Halifax Chronicle/Herald

“God of Missed Connections is a formidable work from this young poet: a considered and important contribution to the quintessential dialogue on Canada’s fractured collective history.”

~ Deanne Beattie, Vancouver Review

“…enviably good.”

~ Mark Callanan, Quill & Quire

“…one of those rare poets capable of negotiating poetic forms with rigour and testing their limits, while never losing sight of the strange, dark music of what it means to be human.”

~ Jeanette Lynes, The Globe and Mail

“a poet…with an ear to the ground of 21st century culture. [Her work] grips you with yearning from the first verse to the last…"

~ Belinda Bruce, Vancouver Review

“[Bachinsky] doesn’t let any sign pass without spinning out possible signifiers. And she sees the signs everywhere."

~ Jacqueline Turner, The Georgia Straight

“A wonderful, wonderful poet.”

~ Keith Maillard, author of Gloria & Two Strand River

“One of the significant, exciting new poets to follow…one whose fine sense of form is equaled by a dedication to using the full spectrum of tone, style, and content.”

~ Todd Swift, Eyewear

“A major influence…”

~ John K. Samson, The Weakerthans

“A…poet concerned with tradition, but possessing an experimental impulse that gives her work a countercultural thrust.”

~ Stuart Cole, Quill and Quire

“An accomplished poet who thinks and feels in the forms she employs.”-

~ Malcolm Woodland, University of Toronto Quarterly.

“She says what she wants to say confidently and skillfully. I respect this kind of honesty…”

~ Alex Boyd, The Good Reports

“Bachinsky’s willingness to range fearlessly through history sets her writing apart...[she] should be lauded for raising big questions. We should also applaud her sheer moxie.”